How Lyndon Johnson Became President
Lyndon Baines Johnson was the oldest of five children born to Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr. and Rebekah Baines. His father was was a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives representing the 89th District from 1918 to 1923. Lyndon Johnson graduated from Johnson City High School in 1924, the youngest graduate of the school. In the summer of 1926, Johnson enrolled in Southwest Texas State Teachers' College (now Texas State University). He participated in debate and campus politics and was the editor of the school newspaper called The College Star. From 1928 to 1929, Johnson took a leave from his studies to teach Mexican-American children at the segregated Welhausen School in Cotulla, 90 miles south of San Antonio in La Salle County.
Johnson graduated from college in 1930. He then taught at Pearsall High School in Pearsall, Texas. He then took a position as teacher of public speaking at Sam Houston High School in Houston. After teaching in Houston Johnson began being active in politics. In 1930, he campaigned for Texas State Senator Welly Hopkins in his run for Congress. Hopkins recommended Johnson to Congressman Richard M. Kleberg, who made Johnson his legislative secretary. He befriended aides to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as fellow Texans such as Vice President John Nance Garner. Congressman Sam Rayburn became his mentor.
Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, known as "Lady Bird", on November 17, 1934. He attended Georgetown University Law Center for several months. In 1935, he was appointed head of the Texas National Youth Administration, a government organization which sought to create education and job opportunities for young people. He resigned two years later to run for Congress.
In 1937, Johnson was victorious in a special election for Texas's 10th congressional district, that included Austin. He served in the House from April 10, 1937, to January 3, 1949. Johnson was known as a tough boss who demanded long workdays and work on weekends from his aides. He supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt as well as Vice President John Nance Garner and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. He was appointed to the Naval Affairs Committee and he also worked for rural electrification and other improvements for his district. Johnson steered the projects towards contractors who supported him and who would finance his campaigns.
In 1941, Johnson ran for the U.S. Senate in a special election against the sitting Governor of Texas, W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, but lost. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, Johnson, who was still in Congress, became a commissioned officer in the Naval Reserve. He asked Undersecretary of the Navy James Forrestal for a combat assignment, but was sent instead to inspect the shipyard facilities in Texas and on the West Coast. In the spring of 1942, President Roosevelt wanted his own reports on what conditions were like in the Southwest Pacific, unfiltered by military intelligence. Roosevelt assigned Johnson to a three-man survey team of the Southwest Pacific.
Johnson reported to General Douglas MacArthur in Australia. Johnson and two Army officers went to the 22nd Bomb Group base, which was assigned the high risk mission of bombing the Japanese airbase at Lae in New Guinea. A colonel took Johnson's allocated seat on one bomber, and it was shot down with no survivors. Johnson was a passenger in a B-26 Marauder. He said that it was also attacked by Japanese fighters but others, including other members of the flight crew, claim it turned back because of generator trouble before reaching the objective and before encountering enemy aircraft and never came under fire. Flight records support this version. MacArthur awarded Johnson the Silver Star, the military's third-highest medal.
Johnson reported to Roosevelt and to Congress that conditions were deplorable. He said that the South West Pacific urgently needed a higher priority and a larger share of war supplies. Warplanes sent there were inferior to Japanese planes, and morale was bad. Johnson prepared a twelve-point program to upgrade the effort in the region. He was appointed chairman of a subcommittee of the Naval Affairs Committee to look at inefficiencies in the conduct of the naval war.
In the 1948 elections, Johnson again ran for the Senate and won in a highly controversial result. He won his party's nomination in a runoff election and won by 87 votes out of 988,295 cast. Ballots in Precinct 13 in Jim Wells County had curiously been cast in alphabetical order, just at the close of polling. Some of the voters insisted that they had not voted that day. The state Democratic convention upheld Johnson. His opponent went to court to challenge the results, but Johnson prevailed. He soundly defeated Republican Jack Porter in the general election in November and went to Washington, where he was given the nickname "Landslide Lyndon".
Once in the Senate, Johnson befriended some of the more experienced senators such as Richard Russell, Democrat from Georgia, the leader of the Conservative coalition and arguably the most powerful man in the Senate. Johnson was appointed to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and later in 1950, he helped create the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee. Johnson became its chairman and conducted investigations of defense costs and efficiency. He used his political influence in the Senate to receive broadcast licenses from the Federal Communications Commission in his wife's name. After the 1950 general elections, Johnson was chosen as Senate Majority Whip in 1951 under the new Majority Leader, Ernest McFarland of Arizona, and served from 1951 to 1953.
In the 1952 general election Republicans won a majority in both the House and Senate. Among defeated Democrats that year was McFarland, who lost to Barry Goldwater, the man Johnson would defeat in the 1964 Presidential election. In January 1953, Johnson was chosen by his fellow Democrats to be the minority leader. One of his first actions was to eliminate the seniority system in appointment to a committee, while retaining it for chairmanships. In the 1954 election, Johnson was re-elected to the Senate. Since the Democrats won the majority in the Senate, Johnson then became majority leader. Johnson's duties were to schedule legislation. Johnson, Rayburn and President Dwight D. Eisenhower worked well together in passing Eisenhower's domestic and foreign agenda.
Johnson had been a 60-cigarette-per-day smoker. He suffered a near-fatal heart attack on July 2, 1955 and was forced to give up smoking.
Johnson's success in the Senate made him a potential Democratic presidential candidate. He was considered a front-runner for the 1960 nomination. He was urged to launch a campaign in early 1959, but Johnson thought it better to wait, thinking that John F. Kennedy would create a division in the ranks which could then be exploited. Johnson's late entry into the campaign in July 1960 allowed the Kennedy campaign to gain an early advantage among Democratic state party officials. Johnson underestimated Kennedy's appeal and ability as a campaigner. After the failure of the "Stop Kennedy" coalition he had formed with Adlai Stevenson, Stuart Symington and Hubert Humphrey, Johnson received 409 votes on the only ballot at the Democratic convention, which nominated John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy did realize he could not be elected without support of Southern Democrats, most of whom had backed Johnson. But labor leaders, who were a key component of Kennedy's support, were unanimous in their opposition to Johnson. After much back and forth with party leaders, Kennedy offered Johnson the vice-presidential nomination at the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel at 10:15 am on July 14 and Johnson accepted. Robert F. Kennedy had an intense dislike for Johnson because of his attacks on the Kennedy family. Robert Kennedy later maintained his brother offered the position to Johnson merely as a courtesy, expecting him to decline.
At the same time as his he ran for Vice President, Johnson also sought a third term in the U.S. Senate. On November 8, 1960, Lyndon Johnson won election for both the vice presidency of the United States, on the Kennedy-Johnson ticket, and for a third term as Senator. Texas law had been changed at Johnson's request to allow him to run for both offices simultaneously. When he won the vice presidency, he resigned from the Senate, as he was required to do under federal law, on January 3, 1961." Fellow Democrat William A. Blakley was appointed to replace Johnson as Senator, but Blakley lost a special election in May 1961 to Republican John Tower.
After the election, Johnson sought a transfer of the authority of Senate majority leader to the vice presidency, since that office made him president of the Senate, but he faced strong opposition from the Democratic Caucus, including members he had counted as his supporters. Johnson sought to increase his influence within the Executive Branch. He drafted an executive order for Kennedy's signature, granting Johnson "general supervision" over matters of national security and requiring all government agencies to "cooperate fully with the vice president in the carrying out of these assignments." Kennedy did not issue this order and he turned down requests from Johnson to be given an office adjacent to the Oval Office, and to employ a full-time Vice Presidential staff within the White House.
Many members of the Kennedy White House, including Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were contemptuous of Johnson and ridiculed him. Congressman Tip O'Neill later said that the Kennedy men had a disdain for Johnson that they didn't try to hide. President Kennedy, however, made efforts to keep Johnson onside, telling aides "I can't afford to have my vice president, who knows every reporter in Washington, going around saying we're all screwed up, so we're going to keep him happy." Kennedy appointed him head of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities, through which he worked with African Americans and other minorities. Johnson took on numerous minor diplomatic missions, and he was allowed to observe Cabinet and National Security Council meetings. Kennedy gave Johnson control over all presidential appointments involving Texas. He also appointed Johnson Chairman of the National Aeronautics Space Council. When, in April 1961, the Soviets beat the US with the first manned spaceflight, Kennedy tasked Johnson with evaluating the state of the US space program, and coming up with a project that would allow the US to catch up or beat the Soviets. Johnson responded with a recommendation that the US gain the leadership role by committing the resources to embark on a project to land an American on the Moon in the 1960s.
Johnson was involved in a Senate scandal in August 1963 when Bobby Baker, the Secretary to the Majority Leader of the Senate, and a protégé of Johnson's, came under investigation by the Senate Rules Committee for allegations of bribery and financial malfeasance. One witness alleged that Baker had arranged for the witness to give kickbacks for the Vice President. Baker resigned in October, and the investigation did not expand to Johnson. The negative publicity from the affair fed rumors in Washington circles that Kennedy was planning on dropping Johnson from the Democratic ticket in the upcoming 1964 presidential election. However, when a reporter asked on October 31, 1963, if he intended and expected to have Johnson on the ticket the following year, Kennedy replied, "Yes to both those questions." Kennedy worried that dropping Johnson from the ticket could produce heavy losses in the South in the 1964 election.
On November 22, 1963, John Kennedy was assassinated while riding in an open convertible, passing through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Johnson was quickly sworn in as President on the Air Force One plane in Dallas just 2 hours and 8 minutes after John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead. He was sworn in by U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes, a family friend. A Bible was not at hand, so Johnson took the oath of office using a Roman Catholic missal from President Kennedy's desk. He was convinced of the need to make an immediate transition of power after the assassination to provide stability for the nation.
In the days following the assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson made an address to Congress saying that "No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil Rights Bill for which he fought so long." On November 29, 1963 just one week after Kennedy's assassination, Johnson issued an executive order to rename NASA's Apollo Launch Operations Center and the NASA/Air Force Cape Canaveral launch facilities as the John F. Kennedy Space Center.
Johnson created a panel headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, known as the Warren Commission, to investigate Kennedy's assassination. The commission conducted extensive research and hearings and unanimously concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination. Conspiracy theorists remain unsatisfied with the commission's findings. Johnson retained senior Kennedy appointees, including Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, with whom Johnson had a difficult relationship.
Johnson graduated from college in 1930. He then taught at Pearsall High School in Pearsall, Texas. He then took a position as teacher of public speaking at Sam Houston High School in Houston. After teaching in Houston Johnson began being active in politics. In 1930, he campaigned for Texas State Senator Welly Hopkins in his run for Congress. Hopkins recommended Johnson to Congressman Richard M. Kleberg, who made Johnson his legislative secretary. He befriended aides to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as fellow Texans such as Vice President John Nance Garner. Congressman Sam Rayburn became his mentor.
Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, known as "Lady Bird", on November 17, 1934. He attended Georgetown University Law Center for several months. In 1935, he was appointed head of the Texas National Youth Administration, a government organization which sought to create education and job opportunities for young people. He resigned two years later to run for Congress.
In 1937, Johnson was victorious in a special election for Texas's 10th congressional district, that included Austin. He served in the House from April 10, 1937, to January 3, 1949. Johnson was known as a tough boss who demanded long workdays and work on weekends from his aides. He supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt as well as Vice President John Nance Garner and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. He was appointed to the Naval Affairs Committee and he also worked for rural electrification and other improvements for his district. Johnson steered the projects towards contractors who supported him and who would finance his campaigns.
In 1941, Johnson ran for the U.S. Senate in a special election against the sitting Governor of Texas, W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, but lost. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, Johnson, who was still in Congress, became a commissioned officer in the Naval Reserve. He asked Undersecretary of the Navy James Forrestal for a combat assignment, but was sent instead to inspect the shipyard facilities in Texas and on the West Coast. In the spring of 1942, President Roosevelt wanted his own reports on what conditions were like in the Southwest Pacific, unfiltered by military intelligence. Roosevelt assigned Johnson to a three-man survey team of the Southwest Pacific.
Johnson reported to General Douglas MacArthur in Australia. Johnson and two Army officers went to the 22nd Bomb Group base, which was assigned the high risk mission of bombing the Japanese airbase at Lae in New Guinea. A colonel took Johnson's allocated seat on one bomber, and it was shot down with no survivors. Johnson was a passenger in a B-26 Marauder. He said that it was also attacked by Japanese fighters but others, including other members of the flight crew, claim it turned back because of generator trouble before reaching the objective and before encountering enemy aircraft and never came under fire. Flight records support this version. MacArthur awarded Johnson the Silver Star, the military's third-highest medal.
Johnson reported to Roosevelt and to Congress that conditions were deplorable. He said that the South West Pacific urgently needed a higher priority and a larger share of war supplies. Warplanes sent there were inferior to Japanese planes, and morale was bad. Johnson prepared a twelve-point program to upgrade the effort in the region. He was appointed chairman of a subcommittee of the Naval Affairs Committee to look at inefficiencies in the conduct of the naval war.
In the 1948 elections, Johnson again ran for the Senate and won in a highly controversial result. He won his party's nomination in a runoff election and won by 87 votes out of 988,295 cast. Ballots in Precinct 13 in Jim Wells County had curiously been cast in alphabetical order, just at the close of polling. Some of the voters insisted that they had not voted that day. The state Democratic convention upheld Johnson. His opponent went to court to challenge the results, but Johnson prevailed. He soundly defeated Republican Jack Porter in the general election in November and went to Washington, where he was given the nickname "Landslide Lyndon".
Once in the Senate, Johnson befriended some of the more experienced senators such as Richard Russell, Democrat from Georgia, the leader of the Conservative coalition and arguably the most powerful man in the Senate. Johnson was appointed to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and later in 1950, he helped create the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee. Johnson became its chairman and conducted investigations of defense costs and efficiency. He used his political influence in the Senate to receive broadcast licenses from the Federal Communications Commission in his wife's name. After the 1950 general elections, Johnson was chosen as Senate Majority Whip in 1951 under the new Majority Leader, Ernest McFarland of Arizona, and served from 1951 to 1953.
In the 1952 general election Republicans won a majority in both the House and Senate. Among defeated Democrats that year was McFarland, who lost to Barry Goldwater, the man Johnson would defeat in the 1964 Presidential election. In January 1953, Johnson was chosen by his fellow Democrats to be the minority leader. One of his first actions was to eliminate the seniority system in appointment to a committee, while retaining it for chairmanships. In the 1954 election, Johnson was re-elected to the Senate. Since the Democrats won the majority in the Senate, Johnson then became majority leader. Johnson's duties were to schedule legislation. Johnson, Rayburn and President Dwight D. Eisenhower worked well together in passing Eisenhower's domestic and foreign agenda.
Johnson had been a 60-cigarette-per-day smoker. He suffered a near-fatal heart attack on July 2, 1955 and was forced to give up smoking.
Johnson's success in the Senate made him a potential Democratic presidential candidate. He was considered a front-runner for the 1960 nomination. He was urged to launch a campaign in early 1959, but Johnson thought it better to wait, thinking that John F. Kennedy would create a division in the ranks which could then be exploited. Johnson's late entry into the campaign in July 1960 allowed the Kennedy campaign to gain an early advantage among Democratic state party officials. Johnson underestimated Kennedy's appeal and ability as a campaigner. After the failure of the "Stop Kennedy" coalition he had formed with Adlai Stevenson, Stuart Symington and Hubert Humphrey, Johnson received 409 votes on the only ballot at the Democratic convention, which nominated John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy did realize he could not be elected without support of Southern Democrats, most of whom had backed Johnson. But labor leaders, who were a key component of Kennedy's support, were unanimous in their opposition to Johnson. After much back and forth with party leaders, Kennedy offered Johnson the vice-presidential nomination at the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel at 10:15 am on July 14 and Johnson accepted. Robert F. Kennedy had an intense dislike for Johnson because of his attacks on the Kennedy family. Robert Kennedy later maintained his brother offered the position to Johnson merely as a courtesy, expecting him to decline.
At the same time as his he ran for Vice President, Johnson also sought a third term in the U.S. Senate. On November 8, 1960, Lyndon Johnson won election for both the vice presidency of the United States, on the Kennedy-Johnson ticket, and for a third term as Senator. Texas law had been changed at Johnson's request to allow him to run for both offices simultaneously. When he won the vice presidency, he resigned from the Senate, as he was required to do under federal law, on January 3, 1961." Fellow Democrat William A. Blakley was appointed to replace Johnson as Senator, but Blakley lost a special election in May 1961 to Republican John Tower.
After the election, Johnson sought a transfer of the authority of Senate majority leader to the vice presidency, since that office made him president of the Senate, but he faced strong opposition from the Democratic Caucus, including members he had counted as his supporters. Johnson sought to increase his influence within the Executive Branch. He drafted an executive order for Kennedy's signature, granting Johnson "general supervision" over matters of national security and requiring all government agencies to "cooperate fully with the vice president in the carrying out of these assignments." Kennedy did not issue this order and he turned down requests from Johnson to be given an office adjacent to the Oval Office, and to employ a full-time Vice Presidential staff within the White House.
Many members of the Kennedy White House, including Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were contemptuous of Johnson and ridiculed him. Congressman Tip O'Neill later said that the Kennedy men had a disdain for Johnson that they didn't try to hide. President Kennedy, however, made efforts to keep Johnson onside, telling aides "I can't afford to have my vice president, who knows every reporter in Washington, going around saying we're all screwed up, so we're going to keep him happy." Kennedy appointed him head of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities, through which he worked with African Americans and other minorities. Johnson took on numerous minor diplomatic missions, and he was allowed to observe Cabinet and National Security Council meetings. Kennedy gave Johnson control over all presidential appointments involving Texas. He also appointed Johnson Chairman of the National Aeronautics Space Council. When, in April 1961, the Soviets beat the US with the first manned spaceflight, Kennedy tasked Johnson with evaluating the state of the US space program, and coming up with a project that would allow the US to catch up or beat the Soviets. Johnson responded with a recommendation that the US gain the leadership role by committing the resources to embark on a project to land an American on the Moon in the 1960s.
Johnson was involved in a Senate scandal in August 1963 when Bobby Baker, the Secretary to the Majority Leader of the Senate, and a protégé of Johnson's, came under investigation by the Senate Rules Committee for allegations of bribery and financial malfeasance. One witness alleged that Baker had arranged for the witness to give kickbacks for the Vice President. Baker resigned in October, and the investigation did not expand to Johnson. The negative publicity from the affair fed rumors in Washington circles that Kennedy was planning on dropping Johnson from the Democratic ticket in the upcoming 1964 presidential election. However, when a reporter asked on October 31, 1963, if he intended and expected to have Johnson on the ticket the following year, Kennedy replied, "Yes to both those questions." Kennedy worried that dropping Johnson from the ticket could produce heavy losses in the South in the 1964 election.
On November 22, 1963, John Kennedy was assassinated while riding in an open convertible, passing through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Johnson was quickly sworn in as President on the Air Force One plane in Dallas just 2 hours and 8 minutes after John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead. He was sworn in by U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes, a family friend. A Bible was not at hand, so Johnson took the oath of office using a Roman Catholic missal from President Kennedy's desk. He was convinced of the need to make an immediate transition of power after the assassination to provide stability for the nation.
In the days following the assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson made an address to Congress saying that "No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil Rights Bill for which he fought so long." On November 29, 1963 just one week after Kennedy's assassination, Johnson issued an executive order to rename NASA's Apollo Launch Operations Center and the NASA/Air Force Cape Canaveral launch facilities as the John F. Kennedy Space Center.
Johnson created a panel headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, known as the Warren Commission, to investigate Kennedy's assassination. The commission conducted extensive research and hearings and unanimously concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination. Conspiracy theorists remain unsatisfied with the commission's findings. Johnson retained senior Kennedy appointees, including Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, with whom Johnson had a difficult relationship.